|
When Einstein Walked With Gödel
''When Einstein Walked With Gödel: Excursions to the Edge of Thought'' is the third nonfiction book authored by American philosopher and essayist Jim Holt. The book was initially released by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on 15 May 2018. Background The book is a collection of Holt's previous 25 essays on such diverse themes as science, philosophy, the nature of time, eugenics, quantum physics, string theory, relativity, the future of the universe, and the foundation of mathematics; Holt also explores the works of such scientists as Alan Turing, Benoit Mandelbrot, Emmy Noether, and others. Reception Parul Sehgal of ''The New York Times'' stated "In these pieces, plucked from the last 20 years, Holt takes on infinity and the infinitesimal, the illusion of time, the birth of eugenics, the so-called new atheism, smartphones and distraction. It is an elegant history of recent ideas. There are a few historical correctives — he dismantles the notion that Ada Lovelace, the daughter of Lor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jim Holt (philosopher)
Jim Holt (born 30 October 1954) is an American journalist, popular-science author, and essayist. He has contributed to ''The New York Times'', ''The New York Times Magazine'', ''The New York Review of Books'', ''The New Yorker'', ''The American Scholar'', and ''Slate''. In 1997 he was editor of '' The New Leader'', a political magazine. His book '' Why Does the World Exist?'' was a 2013 ''New York Times'' bestseller. Career For ten years Holt hosted a weekly radio spot on BBC Wales, "Living in America, with Jim Holt". He has appeared on William F. Buckley's '' Firing Line'', NBC News with Tom Brokaw, CNN, and had a brief appearance in an episode of '' Billy on the Street'' in which he ended an impromptu interview after his interlocutor insisted he reveal his sexuality. Awards and honors * 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award, finalist, ''Why Does the World Exist?'' * 2012 '' The Philosophers Magazine'' named his book, ''Why Does the World Exist?'' as one of the best books of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Farrar, Straus And Giroux
Farrar, Straus and Giroux (FSG) is an American book publishing company, founded in 1946 by Roger Williams Straus Jr. and John C. Farrar. FSG is known for publishing literary books, and its authors have won numerous awards, including Pulitzer Prizes, National Book Awards, and Nobel Prizes. As of 1993, the publisher has been a division of Macmillan Publishers, Macmillan, whose parent company is the German publishing conglomerate Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. Founding Farrar, Straus, and Company was founded in 1945 by Roger W. Straus Jr. and John C. Farrar. The first book was ''Yank: The G.I. Story of the War'', a compilation of articles that appeared in ''Yank, the Army Weekly'', then ''There Were Two Pirates'', a novel by James Branch Cabell. The first years of existence were rough until they published the diet book ''Look Younger, Live Longer'' by Gayelord Hauser in 1950. The book went on to sell 500,000 copies and Straus said that the book carried them along for a while. In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Why Does The World Exist?
''Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story'' is a nonfiction work authored by Jim Holt. He and the book were on the ''LA Times'' bestseller list during the last quarter of 2012, and the first quarter of 2013. The book was also a 2012 National Book Critics Award finalist for nonfiction. Central theme A central question of the book is " Why is there something rather than nothing?", which lies in the domain between philosophy and scientific cosmology. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was the first to publish the question in 1714. In this book, the author records a quest to answer the question through a series of interviews and discussions. Some of the people interviewed are John Updike, David Deutsch, Adolf Grünbaum, John Leslie, Derek Parfit, Roger Penrose, Richard Swinburne, Steven Weinberg, and Andrei Linde. Along the way, Jim Holt also introduces the reader to the philosophy of mathematics, theology, physics, ontology, epistemology, and other subjects. Review ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Publishers Weekly
''Publishers Weekly'' (''PW'') is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers, and literary agents. Published continuously since 1872, it has carried the tagline, "The International News Magazine of Book Publishing and Bookselling." With 51 issues a year, the emphasis today is on book reviews. History Nineteenth century The magazine was founded by bibliographer Frederick Leypoldt in the late 1860s and had various titles until Leypoldt settled on the name ''The Publishers' Weekly'' (with an apostrophe) in 1872. The publication was a compilation of information about newly published books, collected from publishers and from other sources by Leypoldt, for an audience of booksellers. By 1876, ''The Publishers' Weekly'' was being read by nine tenths of the booksellers in the country. In 1878, Leypoldt sold ''The Publishers' Weekly'' to his friend Richard Rogers Bowker, in order to free up time for his other bibliographic endeavors. Augu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alan Turing
Alan Mathison Turing (; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher and theoretical biologist. He was highly influential in the development of theoretical computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of algorithm and computation with the Turing machine, which can be considered a model of a general-purpose computer. Turing is widely considered to be the father of theoretical computer science. Born in London, Turing was raised in southern England. He graduated from University of Cambridge, King's College, Cambridge, and in 1938, earned a doctorate degree from Princeton University. During World War II, Turing worked for the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, Britain's codebreaking centre that produced Ultra (cryptography), Ultra intelligence. He led Hut 8, the section responsible for German naval cryptanalysis. Turing devised techniques for speeding the breaking of Germ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Benoit Mandelbrot
Benoit B. Mandelbrot (20 November 1924 – 14 October 2010) was a Polish-born French-American mathematician and polymath with broad interests in the practical sciences, especially regarding what he labeled as "the art of roughness" of physical phenomena and "the uncontrolled element in life". He referred to himself as a "fractalist" and is recognized for his contribution to the field of fractal geometry, which included coining the word "fractal", as well as developing a theory of "roughness and self-similarity" in nature. In 1936, at the age of 11, Mandelbrot and his family emigrated from Warsaw, Poland, to France. After World War II ended, Mandelbrot studied mathematics, graduating from universities in Paris and in the United States and receiving a master's degree in aeronautics from the California Institute of Technology. He spent most of his career in both the United States and France, having dual French and American citizenship. In 1958, he began a 35-year career ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Emmy Noether
Amalie Emmy Noether (23 March 1882 – 14 April 1935) was a German mathematician who made many important contributions to abstract algebra. She also proved Noether's theorem, Noether's first and Noether's second theorem, second theorems, which are fundamental in mathematical physics. Noether was described by Pavel Alexandrov, Albert Einstein, Jean Dieudonné, Hermann Weyl and Norbert Wiener as the most important List of women in mathematics, woman in the history of mathematics. Transcribeonlineat the MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive. As one of the leading mathematicians of her time, she developed theories of ring (mathematics), rings, field (mathematics), fields, and algebras. In physics, Noether's theorem explains the connection between Symmetry (physics), symmetry and conservation laws. in . Noether was born to a Jewish family in the Franconian town of Erlangen; her father was the mathematician Max Noether. She originally planned to teach French and English after passin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of the longest-running newspapers in the United States, the ''Times'' serves as one of the country's Newspaper of record, newspapers of record. , ''The New York Times'' had 9.13 million total and 8.83 million online subscribers, both by significant margins the List of newspapers in the United States, highest numbers for any newspaper in the United States; the total also included 296,330 print subscribers, making the ''Times'' the second-largest newspaper by print circulation in the United States, following ''The Wall Street Journal'', also based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' is published by the New York Times Company; since 1896, the company has been chaired by the Ochs-Sulzberger family, whose current chairman and the paper's publ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ada Lovelace
Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (''née'' Byron; 10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852), also known as Ada Lovelace, was an English mathematician and writer chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's proposed mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine. She was the first to recognise that the machine had applications beyond pure calculation. Lovelace was the only legitimate child of poet Lord Byron and reformer Anne Isabella Milbanke. All her half-siblings, Lord Byron#Children, Lord Byron's other children, were born out of wedlock to other women. Lord Byron separated from his wife a month after Ada was born and left England forever. He died in Greece when she was eight. Lady Byron was anxious about her daughter's upbringing and promoted Lovelace's interest in mathematics and logic in an effort to prevent her from developing her father's perceived insanity. Despite this, Lovelace remained interested in her father, naming her two sons Byron King-Noel, V ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lord Byron
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824) was an English poet. He is one of the major figures of the Romantic movement, and is regarded as being among the greatest poets of the United Kingdom. Among his best-known works are the lengthy narratives ''Don Juan (poem), Don Juan'' and ''Childe Harold's Pilgrimage''; many of his shorter lyrics in ''Hebrew Melodies'' also became popular. Byron was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, before he travelled extensively in Europe. He lived for seven years in Italy, in Venice, Ravenna, Pisa and Genoa after he was forced to flee England due to threats of lynching. During his stay in Italy, he would frequently visit his friend and fellow poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Later in life, Byron joined the Greek War of Independence to fight the Ottoman Empire, for which Greeks revere him as a folk hero. He died leading a campaign in 1824, at the age of 36, from a fever contracted after the First Siege of Missolonghi, f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Wall Street Journal
''The Wall Street Journal'' (''WSJ''), also referred to simply as the ''Journal,'' is an American newspaper based in New York City. The newspaper provides extensive coverage of news, especially business and finance. It operates on a subscription model, requiring readers to pay for access to most of its articles and content. The ''Journal'' is published six days a week by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corp. As of 2023, ''The'' ''Wall Street Journal'' is the List of newspapers in the United States, largest newspaper in the United States by print circulation, with 609,650 print subscribers. It has 3.17 million digital subscribers, the second-most in the nation after ''The New York Times''. The newspaper is one of the United States' Newspaper of record, newspapers of record. The first issue of the newspaper was published on July 8, 1889. The Editorial board at The Wall Street Journal, editorial page of the ''Journal'' is typically center-right in its positio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Contemporary Philosophical Literature
Contemporary history, in English-language historiography, is a subset of modern history that describes the historical period from about 1945 to the present. In the social sciences, contemporary history is also continuous with, and related to, the rise of postmodernity. Contemporary history is politically dominated by the Cold War (1947–1991) between the Western Bloc, led by the United States, and the Eastern Bloc, led by the Soviet Union. The confrontation spurred fears of a nuclear war. An all-out "hot" war was avoided, but both sides intervened in the internal politics of smaller nations in their bid for global influence and via proxy wars. The Cold War ultimately ended with the Revolutions of 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The latter stages and aftermath of the Cold War enabled the democratization of much of Europe, Africa, and Latin America. Decolonization was another important trend in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa as new states g ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
